


Flying Muddle

by purglepurglepurgle



Category: Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Slice of Life, dark humour, various difficulties
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-07 15:16:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20819453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purglepurglepurgle/pseuds/purglepurglepurgle
Summary: Reno's working style mystifies Tseng. As it happens, Reno's working style mystifies Reno.





	Flying Muddle

Reno dips his hand in his pocket and yanks out a piece of paper. At least, Tseng _thinks_ it's a piece of paper. The edges are soft and linty, ragged, and it's been folded about seventeen times. Tseng is reminded of a torn-up clump of felt.

"_That's _the report?" says Tseng, as Reno attempts to smooth out the paper, which doesn't look amenable to the effort.

"Yeah, got a bit wet in the rain, but I wrote most of it in pencil, anyway." Reno gives a shrug, as if to say 'what can you do?'.

A vein throbs in Tseng's temple. This is not a hard problem. This is a solvable problem. This is a _solved_ problem. "Reno. Why do you not have a _folder_?"

Reno bursts out laughing. "Who the_ fuck’s _got their own folder?" He leans back against Tseng's office wall. "What am I meant to do, buy it at the shop?"

"Yes. They're not expensive."

Reno looks incredulous. "'Oh, hey, I'd like some gum, some coffee, an' a fuckin' folder'?"

"That's a perfectly reasonable list."

Reno snorts. "Maybe if you're, I dunno, the boss of a boardin' school."

"The boss-- boarding school-- what--" Tseng gives up trying to decipher this nonsense. "Look, Reno. You need to keep your documents in order. To do so, you need a folder--"

Reno opens his mouth to protest.

"You need a folder," Tseng repeats. "We have some here. I'll give you one now. _Use_ it."

And so, Reno spends the rest of the morning swatting his colleagues over the head with his brand new ring binder.

"Look at me, I got a _folder_." He jabs Rude on the back of the neck; Rude leans away, swearing. Reno fans himself with the folder, strokes a finger down the glossy black finish, clacks and unclacks the ring binding. "I'm goin' places. People see this baby, they whisper, 'that's a man with a _folder_, don't fuck with _him_'."

"You'd think he'd never seen one before," mutters Elena.

Tseng sighs. "I feel like I'm witnessing a feral child's first contact with civilization."

*

Reno and Tseng are in the caves, in Nibelheim. They were meant to arrive 3 hours earlier, but Reno misread the map. Reno thinks that's Tseng's own fault for a) having a stupid paper map and b) trusting Reno to read the stupid paper map.

"I got no sense of direction, you know that."

"You don't _need _a sense of direction with a map. That is the point of a map."

Reno rolls his eyes, tapping the electro rod against his leg. Tseng can insist on whatever he wants, but, come tomorrow, Reno still won't be able to read the map unless it's magically grown a neat little GPS cursor that moves whenever he does, so Tseng should just get the fuck over it and move on with his life. But Reno's not gonna argue. He looks around, admiring the stalactites and stalagmites. Sparkly stuff. Apparently these caves join up in a big circle, and he and Tseng should be near the end, though Reno hasn't spotted anything familiar yet. Just as he's wondering how much longer it'll take, Tseng stops.

"Alright, lap complete. Looks like there's nothing to report."

Reno squints. "But we ain't finished yet." Does the _boss_ want to skive? Reno's almost impressed.

Tseng frowns back at him. "What are you talking about? We came in just over there." He jabs at a patch of light with his thumb.

"What?" Reno stares. "No way, man, this place is new!"

"There are our cigarette butts." Tseng points. "And the weapons cache."

Reno sees them. He whistles. "Fuck me sideways. Looks way different from this angle."

"How are you this--" But Tseng is cut off, as a dragon bursts through the wall, knocking into Tseng and sending him flying. It shrieks.

*

"Reno!" Tseng gasps, as the dragon closes in. "Throw me the T/S bomb!"

Behind him, Reno hesitates, "Er, which one's that?"

"It's on the left!"

Reno strides confidently to the right.

"The _left_, Reno, the _left_!" The dragon rakes down with its claws. Tseng throws himself back, but he's not quick enough; the claws slash at his chest and he cries out in pain as blood spatters the cavern walls. "Reno!"

Reno frowns. "This not left?" He glances around for a second, and then walks _even further to the right_.

"Where are you going?!" Tseng stumbles to his feet. The dragon rises up on its hind legs, screeching, then takes a deep breath. Tseng knows the movement. Any second now, it'll breathe flame. "On your left, Reno! Your left!"

Reno sighs apologetically. "Nope, not helping-- what's it look like?"

"Round-- patterns at the edge--" Tseng casts an MBarrier spell, for all the good it'll do. "On the _left_! Hurry up!"

"Got it!" Reno chucks the T/S bomb over.

The dragon is swiftly dispatched.

Tseng staggers over, panting. His shirt is torn, his chest slick with blood. "What the fuck happened there?"

Reno scritches his neck. "Sorry, boss-- never did get the hang of 'left' an' 'right', ya know?"

Tseng stares. For several seconds, his mind cannot form words. Then he explodes. "You don't know the difference between _left_ and _right_?!!"

"Hey, hey, hey, man, it's hard!" Reno puts his palms up defensively. "I dunno, just never clicked, ya know? An' it don't come up much."

"This is unacceptable," says Tseng. "Unacceptable."

*

Reno's meant to be writing his report. So far, he's got up three times for lemonade, got up again for a packet of crisps, eaten the packet of crisps, picked up a packet of biscuits, taken a bathroom break, finished the biscuits, got more lemonade, gone to get his pen, remembered his shiny new folder, got distracted rolling the pen down the side of the folder, and started racing the different objects that he's discovered in his pockets. He's even made a scoresheet. Turns out coins roll faster than screwed up receipts. It's been 2 hours since he meant to write his report.

He has not started his report.

He planned it all out. He was meant to be done by now. He just figured he oughta get a bunch of snacks before he started, so he could write in maximum comfort. But then he needed to finish the snacks before he could start. But when he finished eating, that meant he had no snacks, so he hadta go get more snacks. On the third trip for snacks, he noticed he was in a loop, and he got as far as sitting down in his chair, before he realised he was thirsty. So he spent fifteen minutes thinking about how thirsty he was and trying and failing to get up, brain full of static, before he finally managed to trick himself by making his mind go blank and getting up without thinking about it. It's the same process he uses to jump from the chopper.

And that was the first time he got up for lemonade.

Reno glares at the paper pad on the table. Last week, he spilled soda over his laptop, so it's busted, and Tseng's being a dick about getting him a spare. He'll get one eventually, but only when Tseng gets bored of his petty power-play. Tseng's still pissed about the dragon thing. For now, Reno's gotta use pen and paper. That way, Tseng can bitch about his spelling.

Reno cracks his knuckles, and sits down at the desk again. Rude's at the back of the room, on the sofa-- reading, apparently-- though he glances up at Reno every time Reno lets out a particularly impatient sigh or starts humming along too loudly to the music in his head.

Reno swings back in his chair. He takes the lid off his pen. It makes an interesting sound, kinda hollow, satisfying. He puts the lid back on, and takes it off again. Yeah, that's one good penlid sound. Pop! Could do some cool acapella shit with that. Well, not acapella. Acoustic? One of them 8-track things, anyway, whatever the fuck those are, those things. If he had a computer right now, he’d search it.

Pen lid on, pen lid off, pen lid on, pen lid off.

Paper blank.

Reno growls to himself.

_Write a word, any word..._

He finds himself tapping the pen on the desk instead, in increasingly complex rhythms. He wonders if different penlids would make different sounds. He starts to get up, to find another pen, to check, then realises what he's doing and kicks the desk in frustration.

"You alright?" says Rude.

Reno groans. "Fuckin' reports, man..." He scowls at the paper.

_Okay, focus. Title first. It was a _ _g__old _ _s__aucer mission. Just put '__g__old _ _s__aucer _ _m__ission' at the top..._

Three minutes later, there’s only one letter on the paper. Reno thumps the desk.

"Reno?" says Rude.

Reno scowls and leans back, admitting defeat. "Alright, so, you're gonna take the piss-- but I can't for the fuckin' life of me remember how to write a 'g'."

"This for the report?" says Rude.

Reno nods. "Laptop's fucked. Gotta do it old school. Seriously, the fuck does a 'g' look like? Is that even a letter? Did I just make it up?” He drums the pen on the table. “I remember there's a round bit and a stick. But where the fuck does the stick go?” He points at the page. “I tried guessin' it... but that's a 'p', isn't it?"

"That's a 'q'," says Rude.

"Son of a bitch." Reno tears the sheet out of the pad. He kneads his forehead. "Why am I so fuckin' stupid?"

Rude gets up, picks up the pad of paper and Reno's pen, and returns to his chair.

Reno frowns at him. "If you make off with my notepad, the boss ain't gonna let me off the hook, though thanks anyway."

"What do you want to say?" Rude takes the lid off the pen and flips open the notepad. "In the report. You talk, I'll write."

"Seriously?" says Reno. "You want me to pet your bald head? Because I'll pet your bald head. Fuck me. Thanks, big guy."

*

Reno's sitting in the office, leaning back in his chair. "I'm thiiiiirsty," he moans.

"Make yourself a drink, then," says Elena. "The kitchen is literally two meters away."

"Not happenin'." Reno shrugs, pulls a yellow bouncy ball out of his suit pocket, and throws it at the wall. It hits with a thud, and springs back into his hand. "Can't get up."

"What."

"I don't make the rules," says Reno, throwing the ball again. "I can't get outta the chair. Been meanin' to get up for half an hour."

"Are you in pain?" asks Tseng, more out of duty than concern. Reno may have started to deliver uncharacteristically coherent reports, but Tseng's chest is still bandaged from the dragon attack, and so far, Reno has not been receptive to Tseng's attempts to teach him directions. Even threatening Reno with a bolt spell didn't help.

"Nah," says Reno. "Just can't make myself get up."

"So, lazy," says Tseng.

"Lazy an' _thirsty_," corrects Reno.

Rude gets to his feet. "You just want a water?"

"Don't indulge him," says Tseng.

"That'd be great," Reno tells Rude. Rude heads for the sink. Reno calls out, "Appreciate it, big man!"

Rude comes back, and hands Reno the water. Reno gulps it down.

"Why did you do that?" asks Elena.

Rude shrugs. "He was thirsty."

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Thanks to my buddy for beta-reading and correcting my original 'reno has no sense of right and left' to 'reno has a very definite sense of what's left, it just does not correspond to reality', and letting me pinch his g-related anecdote in the name of humorous fanfic. And for supplying me with water.


End file.
